How can we tell people this while maintaining a single-word-requests tag? I mean no dissent.
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cornbread ninja 麵包忍者Mar 26 '12 at 20:33

3

@JeffAtwood: I only have one question for you: how does a poster know beforehand if there is a single perfect answer for his question? I have participated in questions both as an asker and answerer where we ended up zeroing in on one answer. I assumed that this would also be one such question.
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BravoMar 27 '12 at 4:14

3

@JefAtwood: As you may recall, the most-upvoted answers to those Meta questions you posted were for allowing SWRs, provided that they were somewhat interesting and provided some background. This question arguably does that, so perhaps it would have been better if people had been able to vote to close (or not). For the recond, I personally dislike SWRs, but some people do like the more complicated ones, like this one.
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CerberusMar 27 '12 at 8:41

I think that definition is to all intents and purposes "incorrect". I don't doubt chimera is occasionally used with the sense of illusory, but I think this is primarily by people who don't actually know what the word really means.
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FumbleFingersMar 26 '12 at 14:53

4

@FumbleFingers: that would include the OED, then. "An unreal creature of the imagination, a mere wild fancy; an unfounded conception. (The ordinary modern use.)"
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TimLymingtonMar 26 '12 at 15:11

5

@TimLymington: I don't think I'm exactly disagreeing with OED, but I just don't think, for example, unrealistic sales targets can be properly called a chimera. To me, the word primarily means an unreal creature of mixed parentage, which can metaphorically extend to an untenable conceptualisation deriving from mutually incompatible antecedents. I don't see it extending to overoptimistic ambitions in general.
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FumbleFingersMar 26 '12 at 15:39

1

I upvoted because I've never heard that definition before, but I would tend to disagree with OED on this one. Perhaps there are a bunch of literary references that I'm unfamiliar with, but I've never seen it used like in their example sentence. I've always seen it used to refer to something that is created through combination (and not always unreal, although always freakish.)
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jhockingMar 26 '12 at 18:01

3

I'm familiar with this metaphor in my own language and I believe I've heard it used in English as well on several occasions. I honestly didn't think it would be unknown to so many people.
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Martin TapankovMar 26 '12 at 18:34

I have heard business managers call such a situation a challenge. When everyone in the room knows that the financial goal the managers just set forth is going to take a Herculean effort to achieve, they often follow up by saying something like, "We know this will be a challenge, but...."

Impossible, unrealistic, unattainable, unachievable, quixotic, dreamy, empty, even as a non-native English speaker, I can think up many analogues. Just for your fun, we call unrealistic story / plan “a story like a dream,’ 'a cake drawn in the picture (that you can not eat) - 画餅', and ‘castle in the air –空中楼閣', or 'castle on the sand -砂上の楼閣' as well in Japanese.

You set the goal or growth rate on paper, but it is not possible to achieve such goal/target in the real world. Otherwise the action of writing something unattainable would convert such action into something feasible.
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emaringoloMar 26 '12 at 13:41

2

Something that can be attained (however difficult) is not unattainable. Using the word in OPs context is akin to the common misuse of literally.
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TimLymingtonMar 26 '12 at 14:06

A ten-percent growth rate is unfeasible: it is certainly possible on
paper, but very difficult to accomplish.

Inverting the dictionary.com definition for feasible, you get:

un·fea·si·bleadjective

not capable of being done, effected, or accomplished: an unfeasible
plan.

improbable; unlikely: an unfeasible theory.

unsuitable: a road
unfeasible for travel.

Of course, the noun version is not quite countable. You could talk about the "unfeasibility of" something and that's fine, but to describe something as "an unfeasibility" sounds particularly awkard to me.

Aspirations are typically things that people or organisations want to achieve, think they can, but cannot guarantee that they will. In business it's typically the best case scenario or outcome of a particular course of action.